


5 Times Tony Saved Steve and 1 Time Steve Saved Tony (From Himself)

by divenire



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 5 + 1 Fic, M/M, Steve and Tony are idiots, but they're cute idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:12:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divenire/pseuds/divenire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You tried,” Steve says and this time there’s a desperate edge to his voice, like maybe he’s really not sure.</p>
<p>Tony nods again, he wants to agree, but he can’t help it, he snaps. “And what? You’re going to give me a gold star for effort?” He’s trying not to look at the beer bottle, but he feels like its’ taunting him, like its’ trying to look like its’ harmless, like its’ nothing. That’s the farthest from the truth, or at least it is for him.</p>
<p>“How about I give you a plaque that says you’re an ass?” Steve snaps back easily. Tony almost smiles at that. Steve likes to act like he’s perfect and nice, a complete boy scout, but he’s never had trouble keeping up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Times Tony Saved Steve and 1 Time Steve Saved Tony (From Himself)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this months ago for a fandom charity thing and for some reason never posted it. So now I'm posting it! It's my first ever Avengers fic!

This is, quite probably, Steve thinks, one of the weirdest monsters they’ve faced in a while. This one is big, fuzzy, purple and shaped almost but not quite like a teddy bear. It’s not quite like a teddy bear because it’s got these big, fuzz coated horns and sharp teeth and Steve doesn’t care what Natasha says, the only thing he will accept as being a teddy bear is the kind that looks like, you know, an actual teddy bear.

It’s like that movie Tony made him watch last week, Ghostbusters, where this not normally frightening thing is alive and angry and big enough to do some damage. And this one is causing a lot of damage.

Of course, they have something the Ghostbusters didn’t have. They have the Hulk.

Of course, the Hulk is doing almost as much damage as the big purple thing, but at least it looks like the Hulk is winning the fight against the monster.

So, while the Hulk is smashing the beast to pieces, the rest of them are stuck with clean-up, with saving people from buildings before they crumble into the ground and getting people out of the path of the fight between the giant green angry man and the giant purple fuzzy bear.

About a block away there’s a woman trapped in a car and he runs towards her. Behind him, he hears something cracking and glass shattering. He doesn’t pay much attention to it, he just keeps running forward, towards the woman. Suddenly he’s jerked back and dragged up into the air. He’ll never admit to it later but he’s pretty sure he yelps. And that’s when Tony laughs.

He twists his head at an awkward angle to see it’s Tony that’s scooped him up, or rather Tony’s armour. Sometimes, he hates Tony’s armour, he hates not being able to see Tony’s face because half the things Tony says are indecipherable, but his face? Steve can read that like an open book. Which is probably one of the reasons Tony loves his armour as much as he does. It’s easy to hide in, not just from Steve, but from everyone.

Behind them, part of a building collapses, coating the spot where Steve was just standing in several feel of debris. It’s something that probably wouldn’t have killed him, had he still been standing there, but it wouldn’t have been easy to get out of, either. He wouldn’t have emerged from that unscathed.

Somewhat awkwardly, Steve says, “Think you could put me down now?” He doesn’t bother thanking Tony for saving him. He used to, but Tony always just brushes it off, so now he doesn’t bother trying anymore. Besides that, he’s sure Tony knows. Tony always knows.

Tony laughs again, but a few seconds later they’re on the ground and Steve is brushing himself off. He hates it when Tony does stuff like that. He hates being up in the air like that without any kind of control over himself.

He’s about to say something about that when suddenly, it’s snowing. Only it’s not really snow, it’s white cotton fluff. Steve looks over to see the Hulk has ripped the head off of the not a teddy bear and is now ripping out the stuffing and throwing it around.

He can’t help but laugh at that. He doesn’t enjoy the moment for long though, there are still plenty of people that need to be helped. He walks the rest of the way to the woman trapped in her car and rips the smashed in, battered door off of its’ hinges and jerks her mangled, gnarled seat belt off of her.

“T-th-thank you,” the woman stutters. Steve extends a hand out to her and she takes it with an awkward smile. “What... what is that thing?” she stammers and points to the big, purple ugly thing as its’ body falls back and impales itself on the edge of a building.

Steve shakes his head again. “I have no idea.”

+

Coulson wonders why it is that teammates seem to fall for each other. It’s about the worst idea anyone could ever have. But it seems to happen often. At least it does with the Avengers. But then it also, back when he was just a regular SHIELD agent, seemed to happen between agents fairly often. And if he’s being honest, he had a tiny, miniscule little crush on a fellow agent once, for about five seconds, almost a decade ago. So, much as he wants to judge them for it, and as much as he knows it always ends badly (he’s never seen it end well) he can’t bring himself to say anything about how the things he’s seen, the things that are going on, are a downright terrible idea. Besides, he doubts they’d listen even if he did bring it up. Some lessons have to be learned first hand.

As for the Avengers, first, there’s Hawkeye and Black Widow who are constantly having some weird on-again off-again relationship they think no one else knows about. Then there’s Steve and Tony. Steve and Tony are in a whole other level of denial. It’s gotten to the point where the two of them have been pining for each other for so long that the rest of the team has started a pool over which one breaks first and when. Coulson’s got Steve breaking exactly three months from now. Why exactly three months from now? He doesn’t really have a specific reason, that’s just the date he picked. But he really does think it’s going to be Steve that breaks down and says something. Or maybe just kisses Tony out of the blue one day. Now there’s a sight Coulson would like to see. Tony Stark surprised and speechless. Because no way he wouldn’t be after that happened. But who knows? Maybe it’ll be Tony. Maybe he’ll do or say something that changes things irrevocably. Maybe the next time they defeat god knows what or who and god knows how Tony will just let it slip how he actually feels for once and that will be the end of it.  
Either way, regardless of which one of them it is, one of them has to break eventually. And it better be quick, before one of the other Avengers gets tired of putting up with the two of them being as pathetic as they’re being and says something. Coulson would say he’s surprised that no one has said anything about it yet, but there’s probably a reason for that. It’s probably the same reason he himself hasn’t said anything, and that’s because he’s pretty sure that if someone else says it, both Tony and Steve will just brush it off, even though it’s got to be blatantly obvious to the both of them, and they’ll keep going on the way they’ve been going on.

But, and he’s not sure if anyone else on the team has noticed this, he’s never brought this up either, he wonders if Steve would have adapted to the world as it is now if Tony wasn’t here. Tony sort of bluntly forces Steve to accept things, to accept that this is the world he lives in now. He’s always shoving his latest invention in Steve’s face and then going on and on about it all the while saying he knows Steve won’t understand but oh, look at this and this and this and isn’t this amazing? And saying things like, you didn’t have anything like this in your time, did you? How could you long for all that old, rusted out junk from the past when in the present we have all this new, amazing technology? Steve always acts put upon and irritated when Tony starts showing him things and rambling on about the future but Phil knows better, he can see it. He can see that Steve likes that Tony tries to get him involved in the world. And it kind of works, too. With Tony around, Steve has gotten more involved in the world. In the months before they met, Steve mostly just kept to himself, stayed inside and didn’t do much of anything. Now though? Now, when they’re not off fighting off some crazed villain or monster or whatever, Steve goes outside, he goes to a movie every now and then, he goes out for dinner. Even just the small stuff, like reading the newspaper (still on actual paper, much to Tony’s dismay) and watching television, those are things he didn’t really do before he met Tony.

Whether anyone else knows it or not, whether anyone else has noticed or not, Coulson is glad that someone managed to get Captain America to be more involved with the world, to be happy, at least a little bit, at least some of the time.

+

From across the room Thor watches as Iron Man shouts, “Captain! Duck!”

Captain America ducks just as Iron Man aims and fires a repulsor beam at the robot that was just about to fire a high powered energy bolt at Captain America’s head.

In the past five minutes, roughly about fifty or so robots have invaded the Avengers Tower. No one knows why and they’ve all been too busy fighting off the robots to figure it out.

Thor reaches out and grabs two of the smaller robots and smashes their heads together then turns to Black Widow, who has been fighting off robots behind him and says, “That is so incredibly stupid, isn’t it?”

Black Widow ducks under a robot, then from behind it, shoots it in the head. It sparks and fizzes then falls to the ground. “What is?”

Thor nods over towards Steve and Tony, who are now working together to take down one of the larger robots.

“You think they’re stupid?” she asks, confused. She stands up and kicks a robot into the wall. It stumbles back for a second but then steps forward and reaches out to choke her. It gets one hand on her neck before she shoots it down.

“No, I think it’s stupid that they’re still pretending they’re not interested in each other,” he says as swings his hammer around, smashing three robots to bits in the process.

“We’re not discussing this again,” she says, effectively ending the conversation.

+

From his spot perched high above the fight, Hawkeye watches as the others fight to bring down the big metal creature that’s trying to, quite literally, eat the city. The thing is made up of mostly giant mouths full of giant, pointy teeth. What parts of it aren’t covered in mouths are covered in giant metal hands with big, fat fingers covered in some sort of slime. So far it’s grabbed four buildings (small buildings, but still) with its’ huge hands, crushed them into pieces and stuffed the pieces into its’ various mouths.

They were called in to defeat the thing a little over half an hour ago and they haven’t as of yet had much success against it, most of their attacks don’t seem to do any good. He’s fired a few arrows at the thing, even a few explosive ones, and the thing just seems to eat them. He’s focusing his attacks now on the thing’s hands, but that only seems to be irritating it.

He watches as down on the ground Thor and Natasha attack the thing from one side and Steve and Tony attack it from the other side.

Thor and Natasha aren’t talking, they’re just attacking the thing head on, Natasha with bullets and Thor with his hammer. They’re working side by side, but not really together. They don’t entirely need to. Besides, they’ve got each others’ backs if they need it and that works well for them.

Steve and Tony on the other hand, are trying to come up with a plan of attack while trying not to get squished by the monster’s many gigantic and flailing arms.

They’re fighting and they’re arguing and acting like they almost hate each other but if you look closer, it’s obvious that they don’t. It’s obvious the opposite is true.

Once they come up with a plan of attack - Hawkeye isn’t close enough to hear what it is, he just knows they must have come up with one because they’ve stopped fighting each other and started fighting the thing - it’s obvious in the way they fight together. It’s obvious in the way they don’t have to think about it, they barely even have to look at each other to know what the other one is going to do next. It’s seamless. It’s seamless and they don’t even seem to notice.

Their plan seems to be, with the direction they’re leading the thing, for Steve to distract it, to call attention to himself and for Tony to drive the thing into the ocean. Thor and Natasha follow them as they chase the creature through the streets and towards the harbour, still attacking it with everything they can.  
Hawkeye follows them along the rooftops, his bow still in his hand, still ready to be used if needed.  
It takes a while, the thing moves awfully slowly, but eventually, they get it near the water.

But they can’t seem to get it into the water. That is, until Steve jumps into the water. Sensing motion, it follows. Steve swims out as far and as fast as he can, making as much noise as he can. The thing follows him out into the water, mouths gaping open wide and teeth gnashing. It’s taking in a lot of water and soon it sinks down into the water just a little. It’s also catching up to Steve. The rest of the team, with nothing else to do, just stand on the shore and watch.

Steve goes out just a little bit farther and the thing sinks a bit more. Now almost half of what could be called its’ body is underwater. Steve swims back just a bit more and the thing sinks almost entirely. It’s also almost right on top of him.

Steve doesn’t do anything, doesn’t move, just waits. The monster’s giant mechanical mouths inhale one last gulp of water and the thing starts sinking. The problem is, it’s so big and so close that when it sinks, it drags Steve down with it.

That’s when Tony, of course, dives in, and seconds later, comes back up with a soaking wet and coughing Steve.

+

Tony sits down against the headstone and then smashes his head against it once. For about five minutes he switches off from looking at his father’s headstone to the six pack of beer he’d brought with him.

Eventually, he gets to his feet, grabs one of the beers and sits back down. He doesn’t open it though, he just sort of holds it out in front of him, the ice cold glass making his hands cold.

It’s early November and it’s just cold enough that his hands are a little cold to begin with, so the cold from the glass just makes it worse, makes it cold to the point of unbearable but he doesn’t drop the bottle, doesn’t put it down.

Behind him he hears footsteps and Steve, he knows it’s Steve, says one word: “Don’t.”

He spins around, bottle still in his hands, and looks at Steve. Looks at the way Steve isn’t looking him in the eye, but down at his hands. Looks at the way Steve is biting down on his lower lip in a way that as clearly spells out concern as it would if Steve had the word stamped on his forehead in bright, fluorescent ink.

Tony gives his best charming, disarming smile and puts the bottle down as cautiously and purposefully as most people would a gun. Which, he knows, is actually a pretty apt comparison. Alcohol for him is like a weapon. Or maybe the alcohol is more like a bullet and the container, the green molded glass is the gun? It doesn’t matter. It’s dangerous either way.

Steve takes a few slow, measured steps around Mary Fletcher’s gravestone - Mary Fletcher being the name of the woman in the grave across from Tony’s father, the name on the headstone he’s leaning up against. In a way, Tony almost feels like he knows her, he’s come here and leaned up against her headstone that many times. Or at least he’s thought about her enough, about who she might have been that he feels like he knows her.

Suddenly, his train of thought is derailed by Steve nudging his foot with his own solid, heavy, boot clad foot.  
Steve nods his head, wordlessly asking if he can sit. They’ve done this many times and every time it’s the same as the first, Steve always asks if it’s okay if he sits. Like by now Tony doesn’t know Steve is going to at some point find out where he’s gone and show up with the full intention of ‘rescuing’ him. Steve rescues people, it’s what he does, it’s who he is and he seems to think he can save Tony. Tony nods yes, as he always does, as he always has, because even if he doesn’t want Steve here, he doesn’t want him anywhere else, either.

It’s complicated.

Actually, it’s a pretty good description of their relationship. Tony doesn’t want to admit anything to Steve, can’t admit anything to Steve, but he doesn’t want Steve to go anywhere, either. He doesn’t want Steve to be with anyone else, either.

And Steve, for some reason, isn’t. He’s just here, staring at Tony with that perplexed, disheartened look. And Tony hasn’t figured out how to tell Steve - or, rather how to tell him nicely, because out of everyone, Tony actually wants to be nice to Steve, he actually wants Steve to stick around - that Steve giving him that look is the emotional equivalent of tearing the arc reactor out of his chest and letting the shrapnel eat him alive.

Steve sits down with a heavy sigh and that look still on his face and he says, “You don’t have to be here, you know.”

Tony nods like he agrees, like that makes sense because logically, it does. But this isn’t logical. It just is. And it’s weird, he knows it’s weird, that this is a thing that is. That every so often he comes here and stares at his father’s grave and sometimes, the really bad times, he brings beer. On the worst times, he drinks it. Those are usually the (rare) times that Steve isn’t here to stop him.

He hates to think of that, though. How much he depends on Steve. So he doesn’t. Or at least he tries not to. Though, if he’s honest, he’s not very successful at that. If he’s even more honest, the real, actual truth is that Steve rarely ever leaves his mind for long.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Steve says in this calm, reassuring tone that Tony desperately wants to believe. He wishes he could believe it, but he can’t. He was there. He saw it. He knows.

“You tried,” Steve says and this time there’s a desperate edge to his voice, like maybe he’s really not sure.

Tony nods again, he wants to agree, but he can’t help it, he snaps. “And what? You’re going to give me a gold star for effort?” He’s trying not to look at the beer bottle, but he feels like its’ taunting him, like its’ trying to look like its’ harmless, like its’ nothing. That’s the farthest from the truth, or at least it is for him.

“How about I give you a plaque that says you’re an ass?” Steve snaps back easily. Tony almost smiles at that. Steve likes to act like he’s perfect and nice, a complete boy scout, but he’s never had trouble keeping up.

“How about...” Tony starts but he stops, he’s got nothing. And he doesn’t want to be making light of this anyway.

“How about we go home?” says Steve and Tony notices it again, how sharp Steve is, how on top of everything he always is. He sometimes wishes he could be like that, even just for one day.

In response he rolls his eyes and his shoulders and lets Steve drag him up and lead him away. Away from his father’s grave and away from Mary Fletcher and away from the temptation to drink - at least for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Here is my [tumblr!](http://itsnoteasybeinggreenberg.tumblr.com/) Go check it out if you love slash and dumb internet things.


End file.
